Organizational Factors, Residual Risk Management and Accident Causation in the Mining Industry: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Organizational factors are considered part of the broader human factors domain that links three aspects of industrial set-ups, namely, the job, the individual and the organization and how these impact on employee health and safety. The broader human factors domain in the context of sociotechnical systems has attracted a lot of research in the past three decades. In particular, organizational factors have long been suspected to have the greatest influence on individual and group behavior at the workplace, although there is little research on their influence in industrial accident causation. In addition, there is little research on the influence of organizational factors on residual risk management in high-risk industries such as mining. Residual or net risk is defined as the level of risk present with all identified risk control measures in place. Most accidents in the mining industry are as a result of residual risk, as compared to inherent risk. Therefore, it becomes imperative to examine accident causation in the context of residual risk management. This paper explains a systematic literature review that is intended to identify research studies published on organizational factors in the mining industry between 1980 and 2017. The aim of the review is to examine the relationship between organizational factors and accident causation in the context of residual risk management. Gaps identified in the literature review would assist in directing future research towards this critical relationship, which is responsible for the injury and loss of many lives in the mining industry. The search strategy involved identifying published and peer-reviewed articles in electronic databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, Proquest, EMBASE, ASCE and CINAHL. Selection of eligible articles was achieved through refined inclusion and exclusion criteria that resulted in a total of 27 articles eligible for review. Primary outcomes and research gaps from the data extraction are presented following the PRISMA reporting checklist.